


It Has a Balcony

by sasnill



Category: SKAM (TV)
Genre: Curtain Fic, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-28
Updated: 2017-05-28
Packaged: 2018-11-05 23:44:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11024070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sasnill/pseuds/sasnill
Summary: "We could get our own place," Isak said, the thoughts forming simultaneous to them pouring from his mouth. "Because - I mean, we kind of live together now, and Noora's been sleeping on the couch for months, which... that's really nice of her, but - so if she didn't have to do that anymore, that would be..."Even kissed him.When they broke apart, faces pressed together so that Isak could feel Even's breath on his lips, he said, "Would you want to?"Even laughed. He said, "Yes, I'd want to," and kissed Isak again.So they do.





	It Has a Balcony

It wasn't the first warm spring day -- there had been other warm spring days just like this, when sunlight streamed unimpeded by clouds through the curtain, lending a soft glow to the room and combining with a mild hangover to incline Isak towards a lazy morning and an even lazier afternoon -- but it felt like it was. In his memory the soft glow intensified, turning everything about the day golden. 

They were sitting on Isak's bed, propped up on pillows, though Isak was mostly propped up on Even. Even was scrolling through old sitcoms on Isak's laptop. He kept going back and forth through seasons, picking out his favourite episodes at random instead of letting them play in order, saying, _You'll like this one_ , and _Pay attention to this part_ , and looking at Isak to see if he was enjoying it. Isak was enjoying it - partly for its own sake, partly because Even was enjoying it, and partly because Even tightened his arm around Isak's shoulders whenever Isak laughed at something, which made Isak, without really registering it as a conscious desire, want to laugh more, which made Even kiss him. 

It was a good feedback loop to get stuck in. 

Eventually Even's tour through sitcom highlights ended and they dozed instead, rousing occasionally to kiss or reconfigure the pillows, which weren't doing a great job of propping anyone up anymore. 

At some point Even said, "I should go home." He kissed Isak's hair.

Isak looked up at him. "Why?"

"I've run out of clothes."

Isak shrugged. "Borrow mine," he said, which made Even laugh. He was wearing Isak's clothes right now. He'd been wearing Isak's clothes since Thursday. 

"I need to wash mine."

"We have a washing machine."

"I have --" Even glanced away, at the clothes scattered across the floor. "Three shirts. I need more than three shirts."

"Who needs more than three shirts?" Isak asked, but he thought: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Even had worn Monday's shirt on Friday and Isak's clothes over the weekend, like he was doing now, and the other two shirts were from earlier last week as well, when Even had gone home for a few hours to have dinner with his family before coming back again, change of clothes in his bag. 

He decided to concede the point. Instead he said, "Just pack whatever and bring it over." He couldn't quite look at Even's face when he said, "Then you could stay here," so he stared at the collar of his shirt instead.

"Could I?" Even said it very softly. 

He didn't sound opposed, which gave Isak courage. He glanced back up at Even's face and said, "Or - we could move out."

Saying it was like a revelation. A sudden ray of sunshine that illuminated a door Isak had never even noticed before.

"We could get our own place," he said, gaining momentum, the thoughts forming simultaneous to them pouring from his mouth. "Because - I mean, we kind of live together now, and Noora's been sleeping on the couch for months, and... that's really nice of her, but - so if she didn't have to do that anymore, that would be..."

Even kissed him. 

When they broke apart, faces pressed together so that Isak could feel Even's breath on his lips, he said, "Would you want to?"

Even laughed. He said, "Yes, I'd want to," and kissed Isak again.

After that it felt like there was, at the same time, everything to figure out, because there really was, and nothing at all, because the path before them was clear. Isak had a stipend and his dad already paid his rent; what was the difference if he paid for somewhere new? Even would need to get a job but he'd been talking about looking for one lately anyway, albeit jokingly - to contribute to the rent here, he said. And Even's parents would probably help out too, especially with money for the big stuff, like a couch or a fridge or whatever - they'd definitely need to get furniture, because Isak didn't actually own much of anything in his room save the television. He didn't even own forks. They'd have to buy forks.

Eskild let out a wistful sigh when Isak mentioned the forks. "My little stray kitten has become a cat," he said. Isak rolled his eyes. Eskild reeled him across the kitchen and into a hug. "A big strong cat. Ready to go to his forever home."

Isak hugged him back. 

\---

Their collective belongings made a miserable pile in the back of the van but most of it was clothes, so at least everyone could sit in relative comfort. Another plus was that it hadn't taken long to pack, and it didn't take long to carry everything up. The downside was that there wasn't really anywhere to put anything, because they didn't have any furniture besides Isak's television and the bed, which dominated the cramped space.

"I guess put this stuff away?" Magnus said, gesturing with an armful of clothing-filled garbage bags to the narrow built-in wardrobe.

Isak tipped his head to the side. He'd packed clean and dirty clothes alike, figuring at the time that that could be a problem to sort out later, when they weren't on a deadline. Now he wasn't on a deadline but everything was piling up. All the things they still had to do. Unpacking was the least of it: there wasn't even anywhere to sit besides the bed, where Jonas was carefully retrieving a photocopy of his own face from a box.

"Fuck it," Isak said. He wanted to be done, and as far as he was concerned it was close enough for today. He had all week to figure out his clothes. There would only ever be one first night at their new place.

They got pizza. Even bought beer. He went out onto the balcony, grinning like the sun, and shook a can so that the beer burst out like champagne when he opened it, spraying white froth that dripped down his arm and onto the ground. 

When he came back inside Isak sidled up to him and tilted his head for a kiss, which Even gave him. "We're going to have to buy a mop," Isak said. Even laughed and kissed him again.

The boys filed out around ten and then it was just them, alone. The flat was empty and quiet and cold. Bags and boxes were piled up against the walls. Empty pizza boxes littered the kitchen counter. Mahdi had been the first to realise that they didn't have any bins, so they'd tipped out a bag of Even's clothes in order to have somewhere to store their empties later. Then they'd put the clothes away while they ate because why not, right? They'd already begun the process.

There was a single lonely bottle of beer in the fridge, which was filthy. Another thing to add to the list.

Even carried the last few empty cans in and set them on top of the pizza boxes, within easy reach for Isak to pour the dregs down the sink. Then again, everything was within easy reach here. The kitchen was a glorified hallway. 

A more cynical person, the kind of person whose _Of course, as long as you're happy_ text reeked of misgivings, would have taken one look at this tiny little flat and said, "For two people? You'll get in each other's way. Even in a relationship you need your own space. Think about this, Isak. Don't you think you're moving a little fast?"

And Isak would have said, "Less space means less time spent cleaning. I don't want to spend my life cleaning. And it's not the cheapest but the appliances are included so it works out, and anyway, why wait? I'm ready now. Why wait?"

But he didn't have to say that, because his dad had only said, _Of course, as long as you're happy_ , and Isak had to get used to believing it.

Isak shifted out of the way when his phone dinged, letting Even take over at the sink. He rested his cheek against Even's back, wrapped an arm around Even's waist, and read: _I miss your farts already!_

"Eskild wants to visit," he said.

"When?" Even asked.

"This weekend, I guess? I'll ask."

 _You can come over on saturday after 12_ , he typed. The reply was almost instant.

_Yes! Will I bring a gift for your new love nest? Do you need anything?_

Isak tried to think of something. There was so much, though, that they needed; it was hard to prioritise. They needed cups. They only had one; a gift from his mother, who had pressed it into his hands so carefully as she said, _I'm so proud. My son. Your own home_. So they had a cup. But they needed a table. The wardrobe was too small for all their clothes; they needed to buy a dresser. They needed to buy food, too.

 _Everythings good_ , he typed. He stared at it for a moment before he sent it. Let it sink in. The truth of it. There were things they needed to have and things they needed to do, but - that was life. He had Even. They had a home. They'd figure it out.

Even's shoulder blades shifted under his cheek, followed by the rest of him as he turned to lean against the counter. Isak tucked his phone back into his pocket and nudged Even's legs apart so he could get in close. 

"What do you want for breakfast tomorrow?" Even asked.

Isak shrugged. "There's a beer left over in the fridge," he said. "We could share that."

"You'd share our last beer?" Even squeezed the back of his neck. "That's so sweet."

"You bought it, so."

Even nodded. "So really I'm sharing my beer with you."

"It's ours. It's our beer, Even," Isak said, which made Even laugh against his lips. 

"But I bought it with my money," Even said. "So it's mine."

"What? You just said it was ours."

"I take it back." 

"Then you can sleep on the floor. It's my bed. And," he managed between kisses, "I'm paying most of the rent, so the flat's mostly mine too. You can have the kitchen."

Even laughed. "So the kitchen's mine?" Isak nodded, bumping their noses together. "How will you eat, then?"

"You'll bring me food."

"Will I? Oh, I see."

"You see how it is."

"I see how it is. Yes."

Eventually they managed to back out of the kitchen and onto the bed, at which point they had to part to clear it of boxes and scraps of paper and Isak's bag, all of which were dumped unceremoniously onto the floor. 

\---

The front door slamming shut, quickly followed by Even's whispered, "Shit," startled Isak awake. He'd gravitated to the middle of the bed in his sleep, which allowed him to blearily discern, through the doorway, Even shuffling towards the kitchen counter. There was a weird wind vortex that sucked the door closed after a certain point unless you kept a grip on the handle and forced it to close softly, which Isak had made a mental note of several times yesterday and then immediately forgotten. He'd have to figure out why it did that. Maybe one of the windows didn't close properly.

He sat up and tried to rub some wakefulness into his face. "What time is it?"

Even leaned around the doorway, looking apologetic. "About nine-thirty. But don't get up."

"I need to pee, though."

Even hesitated. "Okay," he conceded. "But then go back to bed."

Isak looked at him. "What are you doing?"

"It's a surprise," Even said. He waggled his eyebrows.

Isak grabbed some clothes from the floor to pull on and went to the bathroom. He had to go through the kitchen to get there; Even made him crab-step, his back to the counters, both there and back. What he had in mind wasn't exactly a mystery -- Isak wasn't an idiot and Even wasn't subtle -- but Isak played along anyway because it was sweet and Even was excited and Isak was excited, too, to be here and awake and sharing this moment together. Their first morning together. In their home. 

Isak leaned back against his pillow and stared up at the ceiling, lulled into a more gentle kind of wakefulness by the sounds of Even puttering around their tiny kitchen. Eventually the sounds ceased and Even appeared again, holding two paper plates. There was an empty beer bottle tucked into the crook of his elbow. A handful of half-open flowers poked out of the top; they looked like the ones in the grass outside. 

Isak had never felt more fond of anyone.

Even passed him the plates to hold while he got himself settled, makeshift vase tucked between them, then leaned over it to give Isak a kiss. Maybe he'd wanted to kiss him awake. That's how it would have played out in Even's head, Isak thought. Then he thought, But I like this better. He liked seeing the whole process. He hoped Even liked it too.

"Good morning," Even said softly.

"Good morning." 

Even stroked his cheek. Isak kissed him again. Then he passed him his plate. 

Even had made them toast. It was more cooked in the middle than the edges. The cheese had barely melted at all. 

"Is the griller broken?" he asked.

Even nodded. "I had to make it on the stove. I didn't think to check before I went out, and I didn't buy anything else."

Isak made a sympathetic noise and kissed his cheek. "I like it."

Even smiled. "You liar."

"No - okay, the food is not good," Isak admitted. "But I like the rest." 

"So you like the flowers, then."

"The flowers are good." 

They spent the morning cleaning the kitchen and bathroom with soap and a series of improvised tools -- Isak was almost certain the previous tenants were supposed to have done that; they certainly would have had better supplies -- unpacking what they could, and adding things to the mental list Isak had been compiling of things they had to get. Even wanted a saucepan. They didn't have enough clothes hangers and Isak had only done it once but he was already sick of digging through garbage bags in search of something clean to wear. By midday the list had spilled out of his head and onto a piece of paper, which Even taped to the fridge. 

"Add a mop," Isak said. Even wrote it down.

Even's grocery run that morning hadn't been thorough -- he'd been in a rush -- so they went down to the store together, and that was nice too. One day, perhaps even as soon as next week, one of them might be here alone, or they might have to be quick, or they might just want to get it over with. Today they ambled, Even's hand in his, inspecting shelves and picking things out because they were cheap or because they'd never tried it before. They bought some cleaning supplies and a saucepan. They bought tea and pepper and peas, and then they went home and put everything away.

Isak had spent a lot of time lately enjoying every day, because there was very little in his life, anymore, that he didn't enjoy, but this - he wanted to cherish everything about this. Even, freshly showered and smelling of soap, putting strips of folded-over tape on his fingertips so that Isak could lift them off, one by one, stick them to the back of scraps of drawings and articles and comics, and put them on the wall above where their table would go, when they had a table. Making dinner together in their tiny kitchen, Isak struggling to dice a tomato with a knife that wasn't up to the job, Even's hands on his hips as he ever so gently guided him out of the way of a drawer he wanted to get into. Sitting on the bed to eat and watch a movie. Even blowing on his tea and offering Isak a sip from the only cup they owned. Curling up together, blanket kicked down to their hips because it was a little too warm to be close and be covered at the same time.

Isak tried to burn it into his memory, every detail: that his eyes were closed but that if he opened them he'd see the collage on the wall, Even stretched out beside him, and all the clothes Isak had dumped out onto the floor that morning in search of a clean shirt. That Even was drifting in and out of sleep and that Isak could tell, because he was stroking Isak's hair and whenever he stopped it somehow woke him up enough to start again. That Isak felt helplessly tender. 

\---

"These are nice," Even said. He ran his hand over the top of a chair -- smooth, painted wood -- like he was checking for splinters, or perhaps caressing it. He looked at Isak. "Don't you think they're nice?"

"There's only two."

"There's only two of us."

"Eskild's coming over on Saturday. We need at least three."

Even nodded and let his hand drop to his side. "That's true."

Isak had never seen anyone look so forlorn. "They're not very expensive," he conceded. "We could get them. It's not like they have to match."

"You don't mind if they don't match?"

Isak shrugged. He really didn't. "They're nice," he said.

That was, more or less, their entire day: Isak and Even, wandering through flea markets. Even mostly pointed out things he liked and Isak mostly pointed out things that were cheap, because unlike Even, he didn't have any kind of vision for what their place should look like once they stopped living out of garbage bags. 

Even's vision turned out to be mostly blue and grey, and it took Isak most of the day to work out why: their bed. He was using their bed as a colour palette. 

Even looked up from where he was kneeling by a table, inspecting the stability of the legs. Isak must have been looking at him more fondly than the situation warranted, because he said, "What?"

Isak shrugged. "You."

Even smiled as if he'd never heard anything sweeter and stood up, threaded their fingers together. "Do you like this one?" he asked. He'd been asking all day, which had mostly been a futile endeavour; Isak's opinions ranged from hurrying Even away so he wouldn't get attached because whatever he was looking at was too expensive to a shrug and a _Sure, yeah. It's nice_ , mostly because he didn't want Even to think he didn't care. Isak cared. He just wasn't fazed. Now that he'd figured it out, though, he could feel opinions forming. He could see what Even must have been seeing all day. That vision. What their home should look like, sans bags.

The table was pale and metal and small and a little too expensive. "I like this one," he said.

Their trip to Ikea the next day went much the same way, only more efficiently, because now Isak could select for colour as well as price. He felt elated and adult and accomplished right up until that afternoon, when they took delivery of what suddenly felt like too much flat-packed furniture to fit in such a small space and tried to put everything together.

"Where did you put the screws?"

"Here," Even said. He handed Isak a sachet of little grey plugs.

"Those aren't the screws. They go on after the screws."

Even dug around in his other pocket and handed over another sachet for Isak to inspect. He took them and held them against the instruction manual, trying to discern whether or not they were the right size. "Different ones," he said. "Smaller ones. Why do you keep putting everything in your pockets?"

"So they don't get lost," Even said, like it was a bizarre question. "There's too much crap on the floor to risk it."

Isak nodded. It was a good idea. It was disconcertingly easy to lose things in such a small space; the flowers Even had picked on their first morning here had not yet reappeared. "Empty them for a sec," he said. "Give me everything."

A multitude of sachets appeared on the floor. Isak pored over them, sorted them, set them out beside the manual. A sense of foreboding crept up his spine. All of the screws were either big or absolutely tiny. Isak looked at the manual again. Then he looked at the dresser they'd just finished assembling, identical to this one apart from the fact that it wasn't spread out on their floor. He remembered thinking early on how unstable it was but figured it would get better as they went, which it mostly did, and Even had just kept handing screws over, completely at ease.

"Fuck," he breathed. He pointed at the dresser. "We need to take that one apart."

"What?"

"All the medium screws are in that one."

"How --"

"Because you fucking - because you hid everything away in your pockets so we didn't notice, Even! Shit." Isak sighed. He scrubbed a hand through his hair. "It's okay. Just don't put the screws in your pocket this time. Please."

"I won't put them in my pocket," Even promised. He looked contrite. 

Isak took a breath. It wasn't Even's fault; Isak had only just finished thinking that it was a good idea, which meant he would have done exactly the same thing. He should have checked everything against the manual properly the first time around. Why didn't he check? Why did their dressers have to come with so many different screws in so many different sizes? 

"Fuck this thing," he said. He wanted to kick it. He hated it. They'd been doing this for hours; the first dresser had been so frustrating to assemble that Isak had been certain, when it was done, that things could only go up for them from there. He stood. He wanted to get away. He just wanted to stop looking at it for five minutes. But there was nowhere to go, so for lack of any other option he went into the kitchen and sat on the floor, back against the fridge, and tried to clear his head.

Even appeared fifteen minutes later, holding a chair. He'd brought Isak a chair. He set it down when Isak held his arms out and sat beside him on the floor instead, head resting against Isak's shoulder and an arm around his waist. Isak held him, face pressed into his hair.

"Sorry if I made you think that I'm angry at you," Isak said eventually. "I'm angry at the dressers. I'm angry at fucking Ikea."

"Me too," Even said. Isak kissed his forehead, then tilted down to kiss his lips. "Maybe there are videos online?"

"Like tutorials?"

"Yeah."

There were. There were tutorials on assembling Ikea kitchen counters; tutorials on how to put together an Ikea table made by drunk people; tutorials on how to replicate Ikea furniture for dollhouses; tutorials on how to modify Ikea furniture so that it was a completely different kind of Ikea furniture. They watched them all on Isak's phone. Then they made dinner.

"I don't want to go back in there," Isak said, plate in hand.

"I threw the blanket over it," Even said. "I didn't want to look at it anymore."

"Fuck," Isak laughed. "That's a good idea."

Their second attempt, after sleep and breakfast the next morning, was far more successful. Isak didn't want to kick anything to pieces at all anymore, and it would be nice to have somewhere to put their clothes. The only setback on that front, he discovered, was that everything had been packed in together for so long that the dirty clothes had infected the clean, and now it all reeked. He hadn't thought ahead very well on that one. 

"Can you take these down to the laundry?" Isak asked, holding two bags of clothes up when Even leaned back to look through the doorway, spatula in hand.

"I'm making us lunch."

"Yeah, but can you take them down? I have to put this shit away."

Even gave him a look. Isak looked back. Even rolled his eyes and ducked back into the kitchen. He reappeared a moment later, hands empty, and crawled up the bed to give Isak a kiss. 

"Thanks," Isak said. He pulled Even in for another, and then a few more, and then, reluctantly, let him go in order to return to folding.

\---

Eskild brought them a plant.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sasnill on tumblr too!


End file.
